Chaser Lover | Bbangsaz

Chapter 13

Hanni

Minji's voice is muffled as she curses behind me. My stomach roils as I take in the scene before me. Madness. Absolute chaos. I'm so shocked because the other parts of the house are immaculate and pristine. But this…this is sick.

"Hanni," Minji hisses as she grabs my elbow.

I jerk my arm from her grip and stare at the dump. Dump is a nice word. It's an absolute shithole. I'd barely gotten through an episode of Hoarders once a few years back. After they found a dead cat under some debris in an old woman's house, I shut it off and scrubbed my bathtub until I could see my reflection.

This is worse.

The stink is sickening. Rot. Mildew. Sour…something. Yuck. The potato skins I ate moments earlier, before I went exploring, threaten to make a reappearance. From floor to damn near the ceiling, this room is piled high with junk. Not just junk but trash. Trash! Somewhere in the middle of the chaos is a bed. Shit has been piled up on the bed as well. Only a small portion remains uncovered. Where that person sleeps. Whose room is this?

"Haerin," Minji mutters as if to answer my unspoken question.

She told me she was sick, but not like this. This is something else. I see something run across her bed and I let out a scream. A strong hand covers my mouth from behind. I'm dragged out of the room and the door slams shut. The stink lingers in my nostrils, and I feel like I'll throw up at any second. I fall limp in Minji's grip as she retreats quickly down the hallway. I expect her to drag me back to the living room but instead, she pulls me into what must be her bedroom, hence the familiar scent. I inhale it in hopes of ridding my nose of the disgusting stench from Haerin's room.

My body trembles and she hugs me tight against her. With my back pressed against her chest and her arm around my middle, awareness prickles through me. Slowly, she peels away her hand from my mouth.

"I'm sorry."

Guilt rushes through me. "I-I overreacted."

She nuzzles her nose against my hair and groans. "You didn't. It's…it's not something that people besides her and I see. I didn't prepare you. It's disgusting. I'm sorry you had to see it."

"Things were living there," I hiss, my voice quivering on the line between hysteria and calm. I'm pretty sure it was a big mouse but I can't be certain.

"I know," she growls. "Trust me. I pay a fucking exterminator to come out every week to try and deal with it."

"You pull it all out and throw it away. That's how you deal with it," I exclaim.

She releases me, and when I turn to look at her, her palms scrub over her face in frustration. "If it were that easy, the shit would have been hauled away a long time ago. This is…this is something she's learned. It's been ingrained in her since birth."

I frown at her when she stalks over to a chest in the room. She sits on it and then regards me with a despondent look.

"Our mother is worse," she murmurs, shame coating her features.

Big, powerful, neat-as-hell kimy Minji is surrounded by a family of hoarders.

"Your father?" I ask, my voice soft.

She shakes her head. "He's the cause, honestly. Mom always collected things in our basement. But when Haerin got sick, she started trying to record and save all her moments. Both of them became obsessed with collecting things. It drove my dad crazy. He ended up spending more and more time at his apartment in the city near his office. Eventually, he never came home."

My stomach roils when I imagine her mother's house. How could it be worse than that?

"So, they're divorced?"